Iris Solutions is a multinational corporation that delivers Iris Telephone Suite (ITS) and Iris Autograph. These are secure Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products that are used in highly-regulated environments. Application security had to be of the highest quality, without hindering throughput and application performance. Because the company growing rapidly, Iris was also looking for a solution that would scale well and help keep costs and labor input under control.

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Peggy Whitson is the commander of the International Space Station (ISS), and just broke the record for the most time in space. She'll be joining the panel from the ISS, via the highest resolution video ever broadcast live from that location. You can watch the live stream here.

The high quality of the live stream is made possible by an encoder from AWS Elemental Media Services, which was delivered to the ISS by a Japanese cargo craft last December. The crew integrated it into the UHD-ready cameras that were already aboard the station.

The really empowering piece of the public cloud innovation story is that the cloud is so accessible, even individuals and the smallest organizations can use it. For example, this computer programmer used Amazon Polly and Raspberry Pi to build assistive technology for his son. This is an amazing story:

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

We can't say that compliance is easy; there are all kinds of weeds to get tangled in when you're working in a regulated industry. It can be even more complicated when you're migrating to the public cloud. The shared security model and data ownership requirements are just a couple of the issues to consider when planning that kind of move.

Fortunately for AWS customers, there's a new tool to help with this. The Allgress Marketplace Regulatory Product Mapping Tool (RPM) helps customers map their requirements to the solutions in AWS. Customers can log into Allgress, select the Regulatory Security Framework (PCI, HIPAA, etc), and then dig into the coverage overview or product mappings.

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Barracuda WAF BYoL options on AWS can now be deployed with CloudFormation Templates in auto scaling clusters. Licensing of BYoL instances (which had to be done manually), can now be done automatically with Auto-Licensing. Simply place a JSON file with your licenses in an S3 bucket and provide the S3 bucket details to an S3 bucket. The Barracuda WAF instances will automatically pick up the required licenses from the S3 bucket when they boot up. When instances are brought down, the licenses are released for future use. The entire licensing process during launch and autoscaling does not require any human intervention…

Join Experts from AWS and Barracuda to Learn How to Protect Your Business from Targeted and Automated Attacks

Thinking of moving your applications to Amazon Web Services (AWS)? Then you won’t want to miss this complimentary webinar featuring experts from AWS and Barracuda!

The cloud offers undeniable benefits around scalability and elasticity. At the same time, the evolving threat landscape is as sophisticated and targeted as ever, forcing organizations rethink their security for web-facing applications to prevent data loss. Register now for this interactive discussion featuring best practices, lessons learned, and real-life use cases to learn how to protect your business from targeted and automated attacks. This session will include live Q&A.

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

The AWS Marketplace recently launched support for Clusters and AWS Resources. Earlier, launching an application from the AWS Marketplace meant running single, self-contained AWS EC2 instances. Now, with this additional support for Clusters and AWS Resources, it is possible to launch an entire cluster of instances that interact and use various AWS resources (like Auto Scaling Groups, Elastic Load Balancers etc.,) to form a complete deployment.

The Barracuda Web Application Firewall can now be launched from the AWS Marketplace as an Auto Scaling cluster. This is achieved by using the CloudFormation Template available in the AWS Marketplace. This CloudFormation Template will launch the Barracuda Web Application Firewall into an existing AWS VPC-based deployment as an Auto Scaling Cluster. The Barracuda Web Application Firewall cluster will then boot up and automatically configure the application as a service, providing protection on launch.

Part of a select group of security solutions, the Barracuda Web Application Firewall has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Security Competency.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall qualifies for the program because it demonstrates technical proficiency and customer success on AWS.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall for AWS is a scalable security solution that protects applications from targeted and automated attacks.

Barracuda and AWS Security Competency

Barracuda announced today that Barracuda Web Application Firewall qualifies for the AWS Security Competency as part of a select group of security solutions. AWS Security Competency Partners have demonstrated success in building products and solutions on AWS to support customers in multiple areas, including: infrastructure security, policy management, identity management, security monitoring, vulnerability management, and data protection.

“We are excited that Barracuda qualifies for the APN Security Competency Program with Barracuda Web Application Firewall,” said Nicole Napiltonia, VP Strategic Alliances, Barracuda. “The announcement demonstrates not only Barracuda’s leadership in web application security with cloud deployments, but that Barracuda remains closely aligned with AWS to provide customers added security for their AWS deployments.”

CEO Satya Nadella outlined Microsoft’s compelling cybersecurity vision at a recent conference in Washington. Clearly, this is a very different Microsoft which takes security very seriously. We can attest to this firsthand based on our close partnership with Azure security and leadership teams which began almost two years back with the Barracuda Web Application Firewall Azure edition. Since then, we have added many additional offerings in the Azure ecosystem and we have a growing respect for their willingness, vision and diligence in working with us as one of their preferred security partners.

We are proud to be one of the leading security partners in the Azure ecosystem and it has shown results. The Barracuda Web Application Firewall was featured in the demo, right around the 35 minute mark: http://news.microsoft.com/security2015/

It used to be that you’d have to step outside or peer through a window to see a cloud – now, we walk around in one all day. There’s no doubt the world is a bit more cloudy than it was even just a few years ago; however, with so many options available, people are often left challenged to determine which solutions are best for them or their business. Fortunately for folks looking for clarity on the cloud front, there are reliable resources like CRN to provide answers, which is the case with CRN’s 2015 Cloud Partner Program Guide.